Trump aides alarmed he's 'just golfing all day and stewing' as election slips away: WaPo
rawstory.com
Factually, that's what he did during his time in office as well. I'm not sure what they thought had changed.
Factually, that's what he did during his time in office as well. I'm not sure what they thought had changed.
Ever play an arcade video game from the 1980s? I'm talking about the ones in the arcades where you had to pop a quarter into the machine to play.
Here's the thing about those games. The first 2 levels or so were usually pretty easy. Weak AI opponents. Easily distinguishable patterns. But then you hit level 3 or 4. And the difficultly skyrockets. With absolutely no warning. You go from "Hey, this game ain't so bad" to regretting all of your life choices. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to get owned, hard. Only a few people could get past a couple of levels, and only the best of the best were skilled enough to be able to play as long as they wanted until they clocked the game.
That's where we're at now. Trump played those first couple of levels. Clinton was a divisive figure in her own right and treated the 2016 race like she could skate to victory too. Biden had weaknesses that Trump could easily exploit. The real game has begun and Trump has absolutely no idea how to actually play. So Trump wants to start the game over. He doesn't want to make it to level 3 because he knows he'll never beat level 3. He's looking for a reset switch like on the Atari 2600 so he could keep playing the first two levels over and over and over. Because he knows how to beat those.
But he can't. So he's essentially stopped playing the game. He's telling everybody in the arcade how rigged that machine is, the joystick's broken, and you need to hit the fire button 10, 12, 15 times for it to fire. And he's getting jealous that all the cool kids in the mall aren't listening to him, and are circling around the new girl who popped her quarter in and has gotten to levels Trump hasn't even seen before, while he goes to the corner of the arcade, pops a quarter into the dusty, old Pong machine, and wonders why nobody fucking cares.
Only semi-related:
Hunter S. Thompson took great pains to speak in sports metaphors, because that's the language of "middle America."
I've thought that, for a while now, video games have become the language of "middle America" and whoever can speak to the gamers in their language will capture their minds.
Steve Bannon also understood this, and that's why he succeeded in capturing many young men's minds through Gamergate.
We need people better than Steve Bannon speaking this language and leaving gamers with positive, healthy understanding of the world around them.
Anyway, I write this because I think your video game metaphor really works here, and I think that's the way to speak to a large portion of our populace now.
Make the guy who makes tier zoo on YouTube teach all democrats.
Seriously, the devs took a big risk with the 2016 patch, they just didn’t like what the players did to that gorilla.
I don't know that arcade metaphors really work for most of the population now, though. Even when I was young they were dying.
I think we might be talking about two different types of "arcades" here.
The arcades where you go and play pinball and pac man and street fighter are the ones we're talking about. That was the 80s. Those of us who remember those days fondly would probably be between 40 and 60. I don't know about the rest of my middle-aged community members, but I ain't planning on dying any time soon.
If you're living in a place where 40-60 year olds are dying on the regular, you're probably living around methheads.
I mean the arcades were dying, not the people in them.
... though there's that too...
There are dozens of us!
I mean, that's fair, but that's also why I said it was only semi-related.
The arcade metaphor works here on Lemmy with a mostly Gen X/Millennial audience, but you're correct that the people who need to be opened up politically are the Fortnite generation and younger.
Video games > arcades.
Playstations, Xboxes, desktop games are where gamers are playing.
Twovery evident impacts are regarding others as NPCs ( instead of humans) and the application of Min-Max philosophy to economic endeavors.
Red ArcherArcade NeedsFoodQuarters Badly!!!The idea that Thompson was particularly accessible to middle America is so strange to me as a Midwesterner.
But also I agree. Gaming metaphors speak to the apolitical in ways sports metaphors used to
Correction, he puts a quarter into a pinball machine in the corner, then shortly after gets the tilt warning because he once again tries to cheat instead of having skill.
Tilts are perfectly valid in pinball tournaments, though. As long as the machine's setup only warns you instead of stopping the game, it's OK in most leagues. And if it does stop you, then you can continue to the next ball.
Interesting. It looks like the older games did just stop when sensing some movement, while newer ones allow it to some degree or times, so there's a fudge factor that I guess a professional would know how much to push things. Some might take away the power ups and just let you finish that ball on a "vanilla" setup.
Some old games do, some don't. The sensor is a plumb bob in a metal ring that completes a circuit. Been that way since the 1950s or so, and is still the same system in today's digitized games.
But he lost on level 2. The only candidate he's beaten is Hillary, who's one of the least popular politicians in the US.
And he won only via the electoral college, while still losing the popular vote against her
He lost the first time. Then he inserted another quarter to continue and (essentially) beat him the 2nd time.
And after the brief intermission cutscene, he played level 3. He doesn't like level 3. He even tried to call the attendant over so he could play level 2 again. And when the attendant said "Um...you're on level 3 now, what's the problem?", he stopped playing. Because level 3 is fucking hard.
Picturesque and poignant.
Trump is the kid who got good at PacMan. Then the arcade brought in MrsPacMan and no matter how high he scores and tries to get attention, the kid who scores well in Mrs PacMan is stealing his thunder because it's harder. And he's mad no one is paying attention to his New High Score because it's irrelevant in the face of the new game. But he can't get good enough at MrsPacMan, so he's sulking on PacMan setting new scores and slowly filling the board while his friends try to give him the new Guide for how to score better or get farther in MrsPacMan. Trying to get him to take on the new kid. But he's just broken from constantly being the loser every time he 2 players. He's scared of it because it's a new age where it's not a solved game, the enemies react to you, and he's not fast enough anymore to handle that and it scares him - no matter how much his friends try to get him to get good.
I don't believe for a second Trump is good at a single thing.
He's okay at fleecing and grifting the rubes, but that's about it.
That's pretty easy to do. Most conservatives are gullible as fuuuuuuck.
He's has a mastery of gish galloping. There's no way I could ever approach half of what he does.
But that's about the only thing I can think of that he's good at. And it's definitely something he's good at due to severe character flaws and mental development issues, not exactly a learned skill or intentional thing he applies. But good nonetheless.
Excuse me, but Trump would never play Pac Man. He can't handle Kamala Harris alone. He'd be complaining about having to go up against 4 non-white opponents at once.
And he'd certainly never play Ms. Pac Man. Sure, it's one thing playing an unidentifiable yellow mass that runs around popping pills and doing the same thing over and over while trying to avoid all the non-white people in town, but there's no chance in hell he'd play as a female.
It's Ms. Pac-Man now, they got divorced some time ago sadly.
Ah yeah I realized it later. I got too carried away typing it to check that part
God damn, how apt.
Wonderful metaphor. Although it's hard to suspend disbelief in a story about Trump wanting to / knowing how to play video games. He strikes me as the type that'll buy an arcade but never set foot in it. And then remove all that is good about it and fill it with ticket games.
Have you played those old games? Usually, the first level is easy. Easy enough where you actively have to try to lose. I mean, you get 3 lives. That means you have to make not just bad decisions, but the worst possible decisions, over and over and.......oh.
Never mind. You're right.
It wasn't like a switch got flipped, no one would keep playing.
They'd make a tiny segment super hard so you'd have to drop a couple bucks to get past it. Go back to easy for a little. Then hit another hard part.
It's basically the whole reason for boss fights.
Once games started developing storylines, plots, etc. it was like that. It was an intentional strategy developed to keep you playing. But early developers weren't thinking that far ahead. The idea was to give you a couple of easy levels so you feel you got your 5 minutes worth of entertainment worth, then start punishing you at level 3 or 4 so you'd lose and the next person would play.
And some were made by simple oversight. Space invaders' increasing difficulty was solely the result of hardware limitations of the time that just happened to result in the exact difficulty spikes they were looking for. As a programmer, I could, for example, set level 1 vs. an opponent that was slow as festering dog shit, but be lazy and just double his speed with every level. As long as the player's speed stays the same, it would become nearly impossible to win in a couple of levels.
Either way, the results were the same: 25 cents for about 5 minutes worth of entertainment. That was the goal of the day. As you mentioned, they fine tuned it by the mid 80s with games like Mario and the like. but those early games were meant to get you off the cabinet as quickly as possible so soneone else could pop in their quarter.
Exactly, and long term people would stop playing because they always get stuck about the same time.
It's like how humans respond to rewards, a steady consistent reward is kind of motivating, it's why we go to work in the morning
But what works a shit ton better is sporadic rewards that have a tiny tiny chance of paying off.
That's why people get addicted to slot machines and not working at McDonald's. If a slot machine paid out 75 cents for every dollar everytime, no one would play.
Have them win $7.50 every tenth time they put a dollar in tho, and people will flush their entire lives away chasing that 1/10 of a time they "win".
So if you really want to exploit gamers, you can't steadily increase difficulty. Linearly or exponentially, it doesn't matter. To hook people they need those "wins" and they'll keep dropping quarters or spinning loot boxes.
In coin operated video games, that's when things get easy
A better example with Space Invaders is once they beat a level, they get to the next one and it's slow again due to the amount of enemies on the screen. Letting the player get that easy time again hooks them. If the next level they were all as fast as the last one from last level, it wouldn't have been as addictive
Hopefully his next move isn't to start tilting the machine
The first few weeks of Trump's presidency you could've easily seen what a terrible decision it occurred. Yet people will still vote for this dotard.
This is an interesting article - thanks for sharing! I found this snippet noteworthy:
That is a good point about the criminal cases not going away if he loses, right? It's interesting how it's openly stated by the former aide.
I'm unable to muster any sympathy for the felon's perpetual state of stewing.
He must think that "his" SC will protect him regardless, so he has an out if he loses. Or, he knows about the plan to ratfuck the election regardless of the outcome.
A. Win it. (Looking increasingly unlikely)
B. Steal it. Most of the fake electors are still in place, they've had four years to hire a new sleepers
C. Coup 2.0 historically the Democrats haven't been very smart about things and it'll totally blindside when you pull it again only this time with more people. All those people that got locked up in serious consequences we'll just tell them that we'll pardon them again
D. Civil War 2.0. if he doesn't win it, and can't steal it, and if there's actually military protection around the Capital for 2.0. he'll just openly call for the south to rise again. Only this time it's not the south, it's the rural areas, hell plan a Vietnam style offensive where the rural armed people lay siege everywhere.
My real actual best guess is he's tired. He's old, he's out of shape, he's stressed to the nines and he's just trying to blow off the stress, he probably does have a plan b in a plan c. His actual plan d is probably two take a flight to Russia.
Even the recent movie "Civil War" didn't touch on how and why such a thing started, because it just doesn't make sense. There may be regional conflicts and riots, I don't doubt that, but there's no single organization to pull off a new Confederacy or whatever it would be. People watching the film even laughed at the union of Texas and California...what? Maybe that was a subtle message by the writers to not take the overall thing seriously, the movie wasn't about the background events but about the characters in a hypothetical situation.
It was a real dogshit film. Just gratuitous violence. No real point. No story.
The movie is a counter point to the romanticism of political conflict. It intentionally doesn't go into the specifics of politics that lead to the war as that would be saying "this political side is bad" which wasn't the point. The far right romanticizes a civil war, the far left romanticizes a revolution. What you see in the movie is what it would look like if there was a wide spread political conflict. It shows the gory details to ask people on both extremes "is this what you really want?"
For a lot of people the best case scenario is to end up in that refugee camp in the football field. Worst case is to end up in a mass grave because some psychopath decided you're from the "wrong America". Does the politics matter to people that wind up in those outcomes? Does it even matter to the soldiers storming the Whitehouse? Just seemed like they had a mission to accomplish, the politics aren't all that relevant anymore at that point.
People sometimes feel like using violence may achieve a better political outcome. But the reality is everyone is just worse off because of it. That was the point.
IMO, “war bad” is just so fucking pedestrian as to be a complete waste of the capital that goes into a film.
Methinks you have a romanticized notion of a civil war (or revolution) and don't like having that bubble burst.
C and D might be slipping away from him, and possibly even B. They require a base that's fired up to support him. He's starting to lose that. They'll still vote for him, and his best chance is to take a straight electoral college victory without the popular vote, but nothing extraordinary to subvert the system. If he doesn't make that, though, he's probably done.
He wouldn't be able to succeed at C without military backing. In fact I don't think he has much of a chance of any of it succeeding. But go ahead and put it on your bingo card for trying. I suspect he's going to take a good shot at each one of those before it's over.
I don’t think he ever wanted to be president, but now he has no choice.
Russia is probably plan B or C.
Look at the age of the AVERAGE US farmer.
I am not worried about a civil war lead by the gravy seals.
I'm not too worried either. But The average age of the rural Texan is not 60. The guys that own the farms might be 60.
Yeah this is more just an indicator of the boomer monopolies that heavily exist.
They don't pass on their wealth or business they hold onto it until they die and look at how big some of those parcels of land are.
What about the average age of a meth head ?
I think the civil war one is actually the best case scenario.
Imagine a tired con man, not ready to fight, barely any energy. Calls for his die hard supporters to show up en masses and then a very tiny group show up and get arrested by the army (assuming the army doesn’t side with them).
For D the winning strategy for the United States needs to be to treat them as harshly as we treat eco terrorists. The viet cong had experienced Japanese and French occupation and so were more willing to engage in prolonged conflict. The confederacy had a lot of build up to prepare the common rabble for war. Martyrless crackdowns with a propaganda campaign can remove the will to fight.
Also a good point that a critical measure for the leader of the free world in the mind of a Trump staffer is how strong the nickname game is.
trump, trump, bo-brump, Bonana-fanna fo-frump Fee fi mo-mrump trump
If he loses, I'm very curious to see if people in power still support him. I don't think he will be very viable again in 4 years, physically or mentally.
He may become more useful if they let him get eaten by the legal machine. Then they're able to invoke his image like they do with Reagan all the time, but with some martyrdom thrown in about how those mean libs kicked a former president when he was down, nevermind he got away with the crimes he'd be charged with for about a decade by then.
He might not ever serve time, but having everyone ignore him as useless as he sunsets might be an almost fitting punishment. We know the right struggles with empathy, so he could be facing some very frosty cold shoulders.
The best thing that could have happened for Republicans was trump got assassinated and Biden refused to step down.
Now they're stuck with trump and Dems cut all their baggage by dropping their elderly infirm candidate.
trumps only real shot is stepping down to. Letting someone else run, and counting on them to pardon everything possible and the SC to take care of the rest.
That has a chance at least, but he can't beat Kamala.
I'm glad he put in as much effort into this as he did to stopping Covid. I think I'd have preferred Biden to Kamala, but Joe just stopped bringing it, so I was getting nervous. Without years of Sleepy Joe and Brandon memes, Trump just can't figure it out lately, and barely seems to be trying.
I'm in Pennsylvania, so I'm going to be voting the hell out of this election, and hopefully we'll reach Jan 7 without drama. Then we can start getting on Kamala for her less than great positions, but until then, we got bigger things to deal with and I'm not going to crap much on the better of the 2 options. Post election is another story.
Fuck man....
Are neoliberals doing that thing again where they insist their candidate is perfect and if anyone tries to point out that there are valid flaws with neoliberal politicians it's because they fell for Republican misinformation?
Anyone that was or is going to vote D doesn't care what Republicans say.
Dem voters didn't want Biden to run against trump, Republicans did
That should tell you all you need to know about how good of a candidate Biden was.
I don't believe any of it swayed any votes, but I do believe it got a significant amount of people that either wouldn't vote or wouldn't promote a candidate to do so. From a hype and marketing viewpoint, I don't think one could argue MAGA has not been a tremendous success for Republicans. I don't recall a candidate of either party owning the media or having so much merch-aganda as Trump, and it's going to hurt them when he's gone. No one's going to be sporting I'm going HAM for Lindsey Graham stuff.
I said in my original comment I'm all for getting in any candidate not doing the best thing. There were things I didn't like about Biden, and there are a number of things about Kamala I'm not excited about, but that is hopefully next January's problem.
The concept of Biden as a candidate was viable, but the man himself no longer was. The Republican average Joe that was the real mass behind the MAGA movement no longer knows what to do though now that the Lock Her Up, Sleepy Joe's Got To Go, etc is gone. It's not just Trump with the wind knocked out of his sails, but a lot of supporters as well. Trump spoke their language, but now he's at a loss for words, and I'm happy to see it.
EDIT: Not me that downvoted you. I don't downvote for disagreeing, just for misinformation or bigoted crap and you haven't done anything like that.
No, Biden flaws made people not want to vote for him or promote him
Harris doesn't have that baggage, so as soon as she took over people were willing to do those things for the Dem candidate.
They say the same shit about Kamala as Joe.
It's just when they said stuff about Joe, some of it was true and what anyone could tell from his incredibly limited public appearances.
He did the lowest amount of press conferences as any president since Reagan...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/politics/biden-public-appearances-media.html
Do you really need me to tell you what common trait president Reagan and President Biden share?
The Rs fired up for Trump and the Ds bummed at Biden are 2 separate groups. Whoever minimizes the damages from their own respective group is going to come out on top. I don't see undecideds as a factor with as divergent as both parties are. They both had sagging bases, but the Kamala swap got one group fired up, but the other side just seems caught unprepared, and that's why polling is flipping.
Whoever doesn't think Kamala has baggage isn't paying attention. There's reasons she was hardly anyone's choice last time around, and anyone reading any articles other than the kiss up ones now is already getting a reminder of those reasons. Lemmy was full of articles about dropping the anti-death penalty stance from the platform this week, for example. But there isn't any good to come out of beating up on her about that unless she's elected first.
Don't think of them as undecided.
Think of them as people unwilling to hold their nose for Biden or trump.
Change out Biden, and suddenly more people are willing to vote.
Because Biden was and is a bad candidate. He spent like 50 years trying to be president and only succeeded in a rigged primary against the literal worst president we've ever had when he was the incumbent.
I don't think trump and Biden are the complete bottom of the barrel numbers for an incumbent at the end of their first term, but I'd be surprised if they weren't bottom 5, there might be a handful of ancient (for America) history that were less popular but not in modern history
Turnout seems to be slightly improving, but it's still around 60%. I get not being thrilled about either candidate, but you're not picking a best friend, you're pretty much picking a CEO for the country.
It's kinda weird to get thrilled by any candidate. I like a lot of things taxes pay for, but I didn't get excited for the act of paying taxes. Voting is just another civic duty we should all be doing.
Republicans get candidate they're excited for. Dems get candidates we can hold our noses for (hopefully)
It's a bigger reason why we still have republican presidents than the electoral college.
https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elections
I'm not sure where your picture came from. Or why it's combining 2 elections a line or why it's numbers are wrong.
But 60% for presidential years is pretty normal.
08 got a bump from Obama running, and 2020 got a bump because trump was the incumbent. 2024 will likly be above 2020 still. But that's because compared to trump or Biden, Kamala is an amazing candidate. If we had known it would be Kamala, I think she wouldn't get the numbers she's about to
The Republicans couldn't even elect a House Speaker, you think they'll be able to agree on a new Presidential candidate this late in the game? Trump is the only thing holding the GOP together. Without him they've got nothing.
Seriously?
The one defining feature of Republican voters is their willingness to fall in line and vote for anyone with an R by their name.
There's some diehard Trumpers who are voting specifically for trump, but Republican turnout is fairly steady (obviously population changes in four years). What decides elections is how good a candidate Dems put forward.
We're the party that needs a good candidate to vote for and has to keep it's voters happy
The best thing that could happen for Republicans and Trump is that they manage to fuck with the election enough that it doesn't matter who wins the vote, either the Senate or the Supreme Court awards the election to Trump.
I mean, if Mike Pence wouldn't do it, I don't know if Chuck Schumer will....
It's really not that easy for them. It worked on Gore because party leadership was telling Gore to concede, if he won he'd have put progressives in charge of the DNC.
But even if the SC tries to hand it to trump, it doesn't mean much. They can say it till they're blue in the face, it only matters if the Dem candidate goes along with it and concedes. The DNC won't push Kamala to "do the right thing to unite the country" because Kamala ain't going to significantly change the course of the DNC or the personal at it's helm.
That's the big difference, and why I don't think we have to worry about the SC this time installing a republican.
We would likely see some civil unrest and strife if they tried, but hopefully that would at least convince Kamala to actually do something about the SC instead of just fucking ignore it like Biden did.
I don't have this much faith. What lost gore the election is the fact that it was a terribly close election that the supreme court could swing one way or another (and they swung it for bush). If this is a close election for trump and there's 1 or 2 cases that would make him win, I definitely see the supreme court swinging in his favor. This is quite obvious if you look at the recent case that granted him full immunity. The SC is more than willing to bend of over backwards if it furthers rightwing ideals.
As for what the house/senate can do to swing the case, that loophole was mostly closed after the 2020 election. There's not the same room that trump was trying to exploit to steal an election from congress. I worry a lot more about election laws in swing states stealing the election for Trump. There were more than a few laws passed in republican controlled swing states that gave republicans more discretion in figuring out "legitimate" votes.
If he loses, there will be another Jan 6 with both sides being more ready for it, maybe even the supreme court tries to forcefully install him, then the cognitive decline will be so severe he no longer needed for the GOP, then global fascism goes from moderate decline to steep decline, with currently far-right parties pulling the "let's pretend we're moderates" game like Fidesz and many others will actually have to become moderate.
I just don't feel the same energy. I see much less Trump signs and so on, though it's picked up a little, it's nowhere near what it used to be. The MAGA relatives aren't going on about it at get-togethers, and when they do, it's much less passionate than prior years.
I think any gathering in DC is not going to be met with the same light hands as before. There's no one there to whip them into a frenzy, and with a Dem president and potential future president in charge, win or lose, I don't feel they would go out sitting idle. Last time was the guy in the oval office trying to stay. Now he's got to try to get in, and that seems to be a much steeper hill to climb.
Don't get me wrong, even if Dems were to sweep everything, the fascists aren't going to go quietly. Plenty of Americans have always been monarchists, and plenty supported the literal Nazis up until bombs fell. Then they just didn't like those Nazis.
A large portion of this country still seems pissed the North won the Civil War, and until that gets resolved, the need to guard our country isn't over.
Yeah maga round here aren’t pro trump anymore they’re “Kamala is four more years of this economy”. It’s definitely a different energy than in the past
Between criminal charges, a reinvented and reinvigorated Dem campaign and havi g been grazed by a bullet... I think he he's cratered.
To say nothing of his noticeable cognitive decline.
What worries me is we'll have a repeat of 2016 where everyone just assumed Hillary was going to win so they didn't vote. Hopefully people will go out and vote regardless.
Absolutely. When I saw the headline I thought the same thing. Bad actors will try to sew exactly that thought in liberal circles as long as Dems have the momentum.
We can't buy into it and need to resolve ourselves to fight like hell until election day, regardless of what "the polls" or "the experts" say. We need to make Kamala win in an indisputable landslide. We need to send a message that will make Trump and his acolytes political pariahs from now on.
I still curse the idiots I knew who skipped voting to attend "Hillary Won!" parties
Even if she had won I’d be pissed at them, you don’t celebrate a candidate’s victory if you don’t even bother voting for them.
thats not entirely accurate. Yes there was not as much enthusiasm behind Hillary as there was behind Obama, and she had a lot of (mostly invented) baggage, but she lost beacause she didnt campaign in a meaningful way lost a few swing states by a small margin (because yes, most reasonable people assumed she’d be the next president—and so many reasonable people assumed that eventuality that she won the popular vote by a wide margin).
Trump is noise and makes money for media outlets so they give him a massive and constant boost of brand recognition. They could’ve all been even mildly responsible in 2020 and just stop talking about the out of office former president but instead they kept him in the zietgeist which allowed him to run again this year.
I am still finding hope in the fact he did not win reelection the first time against a
walking corpseelder statesman, and has not won elections for most of his endorsed down-ballot candidates in the past X years.Anyway, people who do not want him in office should go and vote against him.
(and people who do want to see him in office again, sorry you shouldn’t vote for a lot of reasons but the biggest one being they’ll know who you are and that’s how they get you and also vaccines are mandatory for the polls so you should stay away and they’ll also forcibly swap your genitals and ITS REALLY TRUE FOLLOW ME ON FACETUBE)
The possibility worries me, but this situation seems closer to Obama's campaign than Hillary's. Somewhere inbetween for sure, but people are enthusiastic.
I didn't vote for Hillary because she sucked. I voted 3rd party that election. I'm definitely voting Harris/Waltz this time.
Well then, thank God she didn't win!
I blame the DNC.
I didn't vote for Trump either.
Yes, I figured as much when you said you voted 3rd party. Unless we get ranked choice or some other form of voting, we are going to get a president from one of the two main parties for the foreseeable future. Until then, a vote for the person who shares 90% of your views instead of 75% will help the guy who shares 5% of your views with you. Not to mention that the 75% candidate had about a decade of being dragged through the mud prior to the election to make her seem worse than she really is.
I (and a lot of others) are not going to "Toe the line" for whoever the DNC shoves down our throats if we don't feel like it. The DNC learned a good lesson in 2016. I'm not ashamed that I didn't vote for Hillary just because she was "better than Trump". I didn't like either candidate, so I voted third party to help boost their numbers to help get away from a 2 party system. I'm not sorry for that, and whatever shit you give me isn't going to change my opinion.
In 1992, Ross Perot got about 20% of the popular vote as a third party candidate. How did that "help get away from a 2 party system"? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm curious.
What "lesson" do you think the DNC learned in 2016?
What's your plan to institute ranked voice voting & national popular vote?
I wasn't old enough to vote in the 1992 election. I was only 15.
I think the DNC learned that pushing a candidate that wasn't well liked isn't going to win them an election, just because that's who they wanted to put in the spotlight. (Anecdotal based on my personal conversations. I haven't researched it.)
Reducing the 15% National electorate requirement by the FEC for presidential debates would be a start. This allows lesser known parties and candidates a voice on the national stage and gives them more national coverage.
I'm just a random person. I personally don't have a plan how to institute ranked choice voting, but I would absolutely vote for a ranked choice voting system rather than keeping the current 2 party system.
This is what they actually learned.
We barely averted Biden as the Moderate Placator in 2024, running on the fear and hate of the Republican Party to make an otherwise moderate in Kamala Harris our standard-bearer, but if she keeps up with the talks about price controls, we MIGHT just find out if the lessons of 1968, 1980, and 1984 still apply.
And Jackie's Fridge is right. In an election split 51 (Left) and 49 (Right), if you can convince 3 Left-Leaning voters to vote Third Party, you have convinced them to throw away their votes and assure all 51 voters on the Left get what they DON'T want while the Conservatives win on a 49/48/3 split. Unless and until you use a voting system that allows those 3 votes to NOT give the win to the 48 voters, voting third party is just helping the major party most opposed to your platform win. And if you need any evidence of how this screws up Leftists, look no further than our northern neighbour, Canada, specifically Ontario, where vote-splitting between the two major Left-Wing parties (Liberal, New Democratic Party) lets the Conservative party run the show.
"Boosting their numbers" in the single biggest election doesn't make them a viable party. Third party candidates got an average of 5% of the vote in the 2016 presidential election (unless you include Utah to blow the bell curve to a whopping 7%).
Getting that party's candidates established in local governments across the nation so they gain a following, experience, and momentum is what does make them viable. It's not easy, but it's the only way. Zero people care who didn't win the presidential election or why - it's winner take all. No message is received.
I don't care. I didn't like either candidate and voted accordingly. 2016 wasn't my fault. Put up a better candidate and I would have voted for them.
I mean, wasn't it?
The only people that can claim that are folks that voted for Hillary. Not voting or voting third party, you're still participating, you're just pulling the lever that reads, "I'll go with whoever the majority is".
That year it turned out to be Trump. You did choose, a passive choice is still a choice.
You're right. I did make a choice. I made a choice to not vote for either of those fuck heads. I'm not sorry I didn't vote for Hillary. You want my vote, put up a better candidate. Still don't think it was my fault.
Look, you can do what you want, but you should stop pretending you somehow aren't partly responsible for a Trump presidency because you went third party. If a restaurant offers chicken or beef, and you say "whatever everyone is having", and they gave you chicken?
You did choose. You chose chicken.
You said, "I don't really care what I get, let other people decide." Letting other people decide for you is still a choice.
That's the thing. I was offered Chicken or Beef and wasn't interested in either, so I ordered shrimp.
Still not sorry I didn't vote for Hillary.
Like I said before, offer me something I'm interested in and you have my support. If you don't, you don't have my support.
HRC is a spineless, entitled, super Cunt. Zero chance I was voting for that bitch. Should've been Bernie.
Go Harris!
Young people need to get enthusiastic to vote; and Hillary didn't do that for them. Hillary didn't do that for me-- because she's best buds with Jamie Dimon and his ilk, and would only be joining a picket line when hell froze over-- but I still got out and made the only realistic vote against Trump because I'm a grownup.
It's different this time because Democrats are finally being convincing that they're not aligned with the billionaires, and because we've seen what a Trump presidency was actually like now. I think that will get more of the youth vote (with lots of GOTV effort, of course).
That's because he only cares about when the election happens. He has plans in place to deny the results and to send his chud army out to terrorize. That's all he is waiting for.
Yeah… this feels right. He seems to have checked out because the real campaign starts once he has lost. They’d rather use their dollars shielding him from further judicial consequence and preparing to set the country on fire once he loses.
Yeah, the whole "Dems cheated by pulling a switcheroo with candidates" line seemed to feed into that, but I also feel like there was a bit of slack-jawed "well we didn't see this coming" panic in the Republican party as well
Yeah I think there’s also a panic of nothing they tried before is working anymore and now without Biden trump’s age related degeneration is becoming really obvious
Thing is though, if that's his plan, he still needs to keep his base energised. If all they see him do now is slack off and visibly not care, they may just think he's given up, and not turn up on election day. Fraud will be harder to argue with meagre turnout of his voters. They may also be harder to mobilise in November if they got disenchanted with him in September.
So in a way, by stewing, sulking and slacking off, he may just not be doing himself any favours.
He doesn't need the mob of MAGAts, he needs a few false elector conspirators.
I wish every election could be this easy
Remember to still vote, there was a time when too many people just didn't because it was assured Hillary would win.
Roe V. Wade was appealed and many women are dead now as a result
2016 was also "easy"
I know that the Republican party made this happen, but Democrats are absolutely complicit in letting it happen.
Obama promised to codify Roe v Wade when he had a super majority, and he just didn't. Why didn't he?
Ruth Bader Ginsberg could have retired and let us set a better judge into the Supreme Court, and yet the Dems somehow couldn't look one presidential term into the future and try to have a contingency plan. Why?
Obama never had a supermajority. He got close but peaked at 59 senators in the senate and one in hospital. One shy of 60 is not enough.
They only needed 51 votes to ditch the filibuster.
He didnt codify roe because he didn't have the votes. There were several "conservatives" democrat senators in the 2 yr span when they had a super majority, and they would not have voted for abortion protections at that time.
He instead focused on something he could do, which was give 100s of millions of Americans a chance at healthcare. Even that had single payer attached until it was scuttled last minute by Joe Liberman, an independent that cacused with dems that refused to cast the deciding vote for the ACA with single payer attached because his state of Connecticut had several large insurers HQ'ed there. Obama wouldn't have needed Liberman, but Ted Kennedy died, and his replacement was a Republican.
RGB held on because she saw McConnel ratfuck Obama out of his Scalia replacement posting. She knew he would either get screwed again, or have to appoint someone conservative like Garland. So she waited for Hilary, who had a 70% of winning, but who didn't.
The only things Obama did wrong was try to bridge the partisan divide. He was doing politics like it used to be, with compromise at its core. He didn't realize, or at least didn't want to realize, that the GOP had made politics a game of winner takes all. If he had, he could have placed two supreme court justices and got single payer.
Everytime I hear Lieberman's name I re-install Postal 2
Honestly I'm surprised Obama never grew a clue, the second he was for something Repbulicans had to be against it and vice versa.
He only had a few months of supermajority in which to figure it out and override them
The voters are complicit too then. Too many people didn't vote in 2016. Maybe you're complicit too! Let's all finger point at everyone other than the people that did the bad things!
Or maybe we should just say the people doing the bad things are responsible for the bad things. Yeah I know taking things to a meta extremes is fashionable among intellectual types, but it's really silly and doesn't accomplish anything.
The dems were singing some dumb bullshit on the steps after it got repealed. Fuck them, they're 100% complicit
Trump since the 80s has gotten away with deplorable crimes and was still liked. He doesn't know how to handle hate and reality that only freaks like him. Then you add a black women kicking his ass, chief kiss.
"chief kiss" made me laugh so hard
I imagine Mister Chief kissing the Arbiter on his widdle forehead.
Mister Chief is just Johnson.
...Johnson? Oh no.
They were threatening castration. Are we gonna split hairs here?
Trump is really weak, old and tired. I prefer the younger, energetic Kamala rather than a whining, fat old man.
Younger. I wouldn't mind taking another 20 years off the candidates next time, honestly, lol.
Shrug. Age is just a number.
Not when it comes to the notion of politicians making moves that will or won't affect them in their own lifetimes. It's easier/more tempting to kick the can down the road the older you are.
So he is doing what he did while President?
As President, he spent a lot of time doing rallies and fundraisers for other GOP candidates. He was a perfect little spokes model who could open wallets and hype candidates.
Now he's just in full on burnout. He's got no faith left in his campaign and doesn't want to admit he's fading.
Respectfully, fuck this noise and take the thing seriously. The election is not decided until the votes are counted and the secessionists (if any) are shot or incarcerated.
Yeah let’s not repeat the mistakes of 2016 that put him in the white house the first time
Trump is being told by his donors that the voting isn't important because they'll litigate the shit out of the election if they lose.
What's important to understand is that Trump isn't the one in charge. He's a useful idiot.
Trump's motivation isn't Project 2025, or abortion bans, or anything at all for that matter. He has no principles. He agrees with the last person who spoke with him. That's how his brain works. What Trump cares about is having the power to pardon himself and make all of his criminal charges go away.
So a bunch of fundies see an opportunity. THEY have an agenda. THEY have a plan. THEY tell Trump, WE WILL get you into power by hook or by crook. We'll pay for your campaign because we know you're broke. We'll get our people in place everywhere we can. From a vote perspective, you're going to lose this election...WE are your only chance to avoid prison and (potentially worse) no longer being useful to Putin and falling out a high window.
Trump is golfing not because he's given up. But because a) he's miserable and has no interest in being the president, but he has no choice if he wants to avoid prison. and b) He honestly believes he doesn't need the votes because his "people" (who he's stupid and egotistical enough to think that HE controls rather than the other way around) have it wrapped up for him.
Either it's a demotivated Trump, or it's a Trump who figures that if he's going on the offensive now, then the Harris campaign will still have time for a comeback.
Friends don't let friends get lazy, remind everyone to vote!
or someone convinced him that shutting his mouth was for the best of his campaign?
Yeah, I'm thinking of a rewrite of "the greatest trick the Devil ever did was convince the world he didn't exist"
We have to take the election fraud seriously. The only reason a felon like trump, facing jailtime, would take it easy is if he knew he was guaranteed the presidency in November. Either he got assurances from the Supreme Court or he knows something we dont.
How was that any different from his presidency?
Oh! I've seen this one! This is a classic!
Let me guess, he's "growing increasingly isolated" yeah?
I love that his rebuttal to the successful DNC last week was to be the weird old guy who calls into talk shows to ramble. CSPAN energy.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump is ranting about crowd sizes.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump's skin is orange.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump only cares about himself.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump is living in the past.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump is a convicted felon.
Like, who are these aides? Where were they the last 20 years?
These are probably new people who, like the old aides, can't say anything honestly to anyone surrounding the campaign for fear of being fired, or outed (they've done this to their own people expect fanatic followers to do them harm). So these new folks realized this pretty quickly, and now just leak to the press like the entire old group of aides and confidants did. It's pretty fucking pathetic.
And then sell a book detailing all the crimes they could have done something about a year later when they quit the administration.
Wanna bet he's not even good at golf and has aides placed around the hole to toss out a good distance ball when he shanks it
He is known to cheat at golf competitions. He's not very good.
He's also known to have people cheat FOR him. There was some pictures a long time ago of a secret service agent (maybe just a security guard) with an obvious pocket full of golf balls he got called on, and then tried to hide from view of photographers.
My favorite thing I've heard about Il Douche is this one:
It's hilarious that he can claim that with a straight face.
He may actually have that handicap...WITH CHEATING
Donnie will confuse Jack Nicklaus with Jack Nicholson and will then start praising Jack Torrance from The Shining repeatedly like he does with Hannibal Lecter.
Pretty sure they were reptile eggs.
Yep: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/10/18524172/donald-trump-commander-in-cheat-rick-reilly
I mean, that's literally how he operated when he was in the White House, how would this be a surprise to anybody? He's where he is because of a vast propaganda network that's working tirelessly to put him into power because he's an incredibly useful idiot that can get people riled up. He's not given up, he's just getting complacent because he doesn't believe elections or democracy matters at all.
He's supposed to be a useful idiot, but he's spending too much time golfing and ranting that he's not against Biden.
That he's not against Biden?
Trump has been complaining a lot that Biden dropped out and Kamala is the nominee. He's been calling it a "coup".
He is expecting a house contingency vote after his 70+ swing state sycophants deny Harris the 270 threshhold when he's under by delaying to certify. that's why he doesn't care
You know this is true because he’s not really even asking his supporters to vote for him.
This article is desperately trying to change that
Dementia DonOLD the weird racist rapist with 34 felonies that can't complete a coherent sentence knows he's a huge loser and is going to lose again.
Yeah he could bully another old man fine but when he runs against a less old woman he’s fucked
His advisors keep trying different approaches and new sales pitches. But the problem with Trump isn't the marketing- they are selling an outdated, inferior and defective product.
I can imagine that this is a combination of his mental decline, his thoughts of grandeur that the people vote for him regardless and the knowledge that they won't accept any negative election results and they have a better, bigger plan in place invalidating the results and a Jan. 6^2^
I really hope officials are better prepared this time for the GOPs shady business. Because they basically publicly announced it several times. Believe them when they say they'll fight the results, you don't have to vote anymore and they'll make the US an autocracy.
They have a bunch of poll workers to gum up the works. People who think that 2020 was stolen, so they're volunteering for "election integrity". They really think they have an ace in the hole with this. Be prepared for reports of "anomalies" in swing states.
Jan 6, 2021 had a lot to do with who was President at the time. On Jan 6 2025 it's not going to be Trump in the Whitehouse.
You love to see it.
Please. Keep doing this Donny. In fact, just give up now so we can have a sane government.
Oh, so he's just pretty much doing what he did every day when he was in the White House
Mastermind good guy Trump's master plan to drain the swamp finally hitting the home stretch.
Just like he treated the presidency, especially during covid.
Trump’s greatest weakness is women. They always have been. He can’t talk too tough about them because this dude is a momma’s boy larping as a bully. His reaction to every woman who sued him has been lame and weak or nothing at all. Kamala was a slam dunk against this guy because they figured out his weakness and are exploiting it. Doesn’t mean you should sit back and not vote. VOTE and make it a huge landslide for funsies.
He was running against a woman in the only election he won.
His real weakness is having people be dismissive towards him. Harris' message of "It's the same disrespect as always, we're moving on from that" and Walz's message of "he's a weirdo" is working great. Used to be he'd say something batshit insane, Democrats would be understandably outraged, Trump would dominate the news cycle, his base would see it as him "owning the libs." Low information voters would only hear about Trump and hear nothing from the Dems other them talking about Trump and not show up on voting day.
I don't quite agree with you because of Clinton. If I were picking your grade this weakness, I would say it's his narcissism, which has also been his strength at various times in his life.
Two things that are just so indictive of the Republican party are 1) the aid said trump hasnt come up with a good nickname for Harris and that's really hurting him, like the future of democracy comes down to being able to call someone a funny name. It's so childish and so accurate to conservative voters. 2) the blatant admitting that him getting elected is the only way he can get out of his legal troubles, admitting that he's guilty and only if he gets special treatment by being president will he be able to avoid consequences.
Just gotta get those rounds in before sent to the clink.
concerned family member shows up - "oh my God, is he ok??"
Aide, visibly shaken - "I honestly don't know, I've never seen him like this.."
concerned family member - "is..is he out there right now?*
Aide - yes... I'm so worried, he is out there right now, just.. playing golf, all day, every day... he needs to stop and confront his feelings and all he can do is golf sob"
CFM "earlier you said 27 holes... he must be exhausted just trying to cope..this is really bad"
Aide - "IT IS SO BAD PLEASE HELP HIM!!"
CFM - "God be with me, I will get him to come inside and drink a diet coke. Hopefully he will snap out of this madness....."
Aide - "..please...go with God!"
CFM - "God will guide me to him. Wish me luck!"
removes leather shoes, hops in cart, and speeds away through the green grass, nary a thought to use the given path... this is the most important rescue in the world. People say that it was the most important, maybe, probably, the most important, ever.
And who would the concerned family member actually be? It almost had to be Eric or Jr. Surely none of the others give even the smallest shits.
I honestly didn't know who to write down, maybe Barron? He's heard of Trump, maybe he would actually want to give a hand to such a wretched soggy being? Or, imagine he might be invited to caddy the clubs behind the cart?
Hopefully age is catching up to him
Or the realization that consequences don't have to be legal.
Manifest.
Manifest.
Manifest.
What is this in reference to? I doubt it's this hymn https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/ns/241
There's an idea on the internet that you can manifest certain things into reality by visualizing it really hard. Here it's being used in a joking sense almost like trying to cast a hex on Trump.
Sounds about right. The guy is just lazy and petty. And yet, due to the outdated, slavery-era EC and the fact that 30-some percent of this country thinks this dumbphuck is the best choice for office, we just might have him in office anyway, no matter how lazy, inept and stupid he is.
Let him go. Best place for him
Losing to a black woman has created a narcissistic wound in Trump.
And he is doing what narcissistic people do when they are wounded. We turn inward and stonewall the rest of the world.
or lash out because there's no defense for his behavior so he has to go on the attack
i love to hear it
Tbf, this is basically him being presidential. Good on him for showing the people what he's really about. Nothing.
He knows his best shot is cheating and maybe just enough tactically deployed violence. The bigger the gap of his popular vote defeat, the more their cheating has to overcome.
Vote.
Awesome
Honestly, dude clearly doesn't want this. He just doesn't want the shame that would come with stepping down at this point.
He didn't want it the first time, now he doesn't want to go to jail
Orange man fukt
What a demented fool U R!
You are a brainwashed little lemming!
Yet he still found time to save the world! The Orange Lion!! 👊✌️
You are a pathetic moron. Otherwise you’re okay
You’re an idiot with TDS!
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Trump and Harris have been very close to 50-50 on prediction markets for the past week. Harris was slightly ahead before that, and has lost that lead. It doesn't mean Trump is winning, but Harris doesn't seem to have gotten a convention bounce.
I saw some of the Dem convention on TV and thought it was terrible. I'm not surprised if it didn't go over well.
Gotta love Lemmy for people downvoting a comment like this one
hypothetically, if he manages to lose the election by a massive margin it'll start looking more like Putin's numbers, which will undermine the legitimacy of a democratic government
That's not likely. There are a significant number of people that vote R every time (just as there are also those who vote D everytime ). Do some phone banking, you'll quickly find out how many people vote a certain way because they're a Republican/Democrat family.
Because of this, neither the Dems nor the GOP will ever be below 30% no matter how bad their candidate is.
i could see a world where a desperate Trump calls for an election boycott
I remember a time when journalists were impartial and reported the truth. Great newsmen like Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite delivered the news and and it was always unvarnished truth. Today just about every news person is only a mouthpiece with no integrity and no allegiance to the truth. It’s as though they all graduated from the school of Pravda. The corporate media is just an arm of the Democrat Party and they are as believable as the concept of Santa Claus. It’s a sad state of affairs that the gullible American people are being spoon fed a diet of propaganda every minute of the day. All that to say that this is a bogus story about President Trump.
*former president, felon, fraud, conman, rapist Trump.
What does that say about the laws that are created under a system such as this, do we gamely continue to follow the letter of the law?